In 2014, Microsoft launched a chatbot—an AI system that communicates with people—called Xiaoice. It was integrated into Tencent’s WeChat, the largest social messaging service in China. Xiaoice performed quite well, getting to 40 million users within a few years.
In light of the success, Microsoft wanted to see if it could do something similar in the US market. The company’s Bing and the Technology and Research Group leveraged AI technologies to build a new chatbot: Tay. The developers even enlisted the help of improvisational comedians to make the conversion engaging ...
